The Compliant Dog – Coercion and Compulsion in Dog Training

When I was in high school, I had a friend who would frequently say “Be careful what you wish for.” Usually we were brainstorming silly teenage activities without care or concern for the possible outcomes. My friend was generally regarded more as a “party pooper” than a voice of reason. But she would just smile and usually decline to join us in some of our reckless adventures. When I got into dog training and dog agility many years ago, I was suddenly reminded of that high school friend. “Be careful what you wish for” indeed!

We have had dogs for the past 30 years or so. In the last dozen or so years we have participated in agility and other dog performance sports. Shortly after we started agility, we had a change of heart regarding dogs and how to work with them. We discovered behavioural science and animal learning theory. I don’t think we were quite prepared for the cognitive dissonance that would cause as we watched some owners work with their dogs and reflected on our history with our own dogs.

Just DO it!

“Just Do It” is a clever marketing slogan used by Nike. It also seems to be an attitude that is common with dog owners when it comes to their dogs. Whether it is competition obedience or just greeting a guest at home, some owners want their dog to “just do it” their way when they demand it. It seems that there is a “by any means necessary” approach to getting a dog to comply with what the owner wants.

Twenty five years ago when I took our collie to our first dog manners class I was taught that classic move of yanking-on-the-leash-in-order-to-get-my-dog-to-comply-with-my-requests. I was to continue my incessant yanking until my dog did what I asked. Remarkably, this was considered “teaching” my dog. That seems rather like poking an 8 year old until he gets the answer to a math problem correct. It may produce the correct result but is it really “teaching” in the proper sense?

By yanking on the leash, I was using coercion. I was applying pressure on my dog to find the correct behaviour in order to stop the annoying yanking on his neck. And you know what? It worked! My dog eventually learned how to avoid what he surely thought was one of my most annoying habits; yanking on his neck. That’s what compulsion training is – being unpleasant to my dog until they do what I want them to do.

A hunting analogy

Yes, for years the “leash yank” technique served us well and we taught all kinds of things to our dog with it. Mostly things NOT to do. What we were not quite clear on is all the additional things that approach also taught our dog. The best way I can explain these “extras” is by suggesting that you could go squirrel hunting with a cannon. You are guaranteed to hit the squirrel but your garden will be a bit of a mess when it’s over.

You see, one of the first things my dogs learned from all that yanking is that trying ANYTHING had a statistically high chance of getting yanked. The best default behaviour was nothing at all. Only act when you know you won’t get yanked. Unfortunately it’s just a fact that there are more incorrect answers to any problem than there are correct answers. In the end, we were left with “good dogs” who didn’t do things they weren’t supposed to do. They didn’t do much else either.

To return to the squirrel hunting analogy, we had fired enough cannon balls that there wasn’t much left of that garden. There wasn’t that much dog there either after we had yanked enough. We were left with what most people would call a pretty good dog. They didn’t get into much trouble and they were docile and compliant companions. We might have been better off with stuffed animals that didn’t need to be fed, walked, and taken to the veterinarian. It would have been cheaper.

Lazy training

Looking back on it, it isn’t hard to see why we would train our dogs that way. It was easy. We only had to pay attention and make the effort when they were doing something we didn’t want. There was no planning for what behaviours we wanted them to have. There was no time set aside to practice the things we wanted to teach them. All we had to do was just “correct” them when they didn’t do things our way. In hindsight, that was a pretty lazy way to train.

There are hundreds of excuses that all lead back to this kind of lazy training. There always seems to be something more important than taking the time to teach our dogs. Especially since the “lazy” method produces what people generally consider a “good dog” anyway. It would be bad enough if it stopped there but we got even more clever.

So I learned that yanking on the collar was unpleasant enough to produce the results we wanted. But if there were a way to make the yanking more unpleasant, would the training go faster? And then we purchased the prong collar. More discomfort per yank and you have to yank less to get the desired result. Thanks to the advancements of 20th century technology we no longer even needed to bother yanking on the leash. We went out and purchased a remote electronic collar capable of delivering everything from a mildly unpleasant “buzz” to a painful electric shock in response to unwanted behaviour. Just push the button.

Compliance versus Performance

Yes, we owned and used both prong and electronic (“shock”) collars on our dogs. At the time we were pretty happy with the results. We got the behaviours we wanted, mostly. Our dogs never attacked us or freaked out. They were good to guests in our home. They were generally “good dogs” by the most common definitions of the term. It wasn’t until we turned to science based training that we learned the full extent of all that compulsion training.

There is a difference between a dog complying with your wishes and a dog that performs for you. You can see the difference. By using coercion, by yanking and jolting our dogs, they were doing what we asked to avoid something unpleasant. They wouldn’t necessarily do it if they didn’t have to and we made sure they did. Performance is a different thing. There is an excitement and an enthusiasm that shows that the dog wants to do this thing for you.

When we started agility years ago, our dog Vince had been trained for almost 2 years using compulsion before we changed how we train. He did pretty well in agility but always seemed tentative and not fully at ease. It wasn’t until we trained our dog Tira using behavioural science from a puppy that we saw what was missing in Vince. Compulsion and coercion training didn’t necessarily create any problems for us in our previous dogs so much as it took away many of the wonderful aspects of dogs that we were seeing in Tira.

Be careful what you wish for

We had good dogs. No question there. But it’s remarkable what we came to accept for the sake of getting our dogs to comply. We got what we wanted all right. But we missed out on so much without ever knowing. All we wanted was a good dog. Be careful what you wish for.

It’s not the tools. The slip collars, the prong collars, the electronic collars are still in a box somewhere. It’s how we chose to use them. Lazy training. The one tool it took us too long to learn how to use was the 3 pounds of wet, grey matter between our ears. There’s a difference between enforcing compliance and teaching performance. There are lots of ways and lots of tools to do either one but it’s a choice we have to make.

Do we work to get compliance and accept whatever is left in our dogs or do we teach them and give them a reason to perform? I can spot compliant dogs. You can see it in their eyes. Looking back at old photos, I know that I raised more than one. I won’t make that mistake again.

Until next time, have fun with your dogs.

NOTE: All of the photos in this article are actual box covers of electronic collars currently sold in stores. I’m stunned they actually used these dogs on their covers.

Comments

I am frankly appalled at ghastly amateur dog trainers who use shock collars/prong collars on ”service dogs”.
These owners call them ”tools” and their unfortunate dogs ”medical equipment”.
The USA service dog position seems chaotic and unregulated, with basically anyone deciding their dog can be ”a service animal”wether the dog is unsuited to the job or not.
These owners become aggressive with other people in shops, ”can you teach your children to stop looking at my dog”..
wheras a properly selected and trained dog wouldn’t be remotely bothered by little kids merely looking at them.
There is a cat on You Tube called Symie, who is clearly loving what he does [alerts his person to seizures] he walks on a loose lead, heels, sits, poos in the loo, showers, and is basically a dog in a feline body..the cat just loves what he does.
Our own dogs were trained without force/coercion, and they were well mannered, easy to be around active dogs..currently looking to get another dog, who will also be trained without force or yanking.
A friend has a Great Dane who has considerable size,and he is a well mannered dog, despite being an ‘adolescent’.
So glad trainers like you are advocating better ways of training- a dog ideally wants to do the tasks asked of him/her, not be zapped or coerced into them [same with horses- brutal bits/nosebands exist, like the Spanish ”serrata” noseband, a saw of metal that goes over the nasal bones and causes some horrible wounds- so clearly the pain does not make the horse ”compliant”, just resisting.

I have a Labrador puppy, and I rarely punish her for anything. The vast majority of my training involves telling and showing her what to do, and then giving her treats or affection for doing it. Usually, removing the treat is enough of a disincentive for her if she disobeys – I still remember the look on her face when she was told to sit & stay and tried to get up to grab the treat early only to have me take it away before she got it! After that, she knew she had to wait for permission.

I do yank on her leash, though. Not as a punishment, just as a practical strategy to get her moving if she’s stopped while we’re walking. She doesn’t seem to find it aversive at all. (Only time she found it aversive was when her collar broke and we had to walk her home with her leash looped around her neck – and I hated that walk almost as much as she did!)

I’ve also encouraged her to learn to ask me for things, as well as listening when I ask. In order to reduce accidents, we taught her to ring a bell in order to ask to go outside. She also figured out on her own that if she brought her food or water dish to me, I’d fill it up for her. I like the fact that if she needs something, she has a way of telling me instead of just waiting for me to notice on my own. And it’s good for her mental health to be able to control some things in her life.

I guess I’d say we’re doing pretty well, because she seems like a happy dog. She loves to play, go for walks, investigate things, and greet people. She still has some things to learn, but so far her obedience training has not impeded her enjoyment of life one bit.

What you describe with your “practical strategy” of gently yanking on your dog’s leash is what I describe more often as an “Interrupter” rather than an aversive. I also use gentle tugs on the leash but it is not mean to punish or diminish any particular behaviour. It is just an attention-getter, something to interrupt the dog so they are actually paying attention to what I’m asking. Think of it as a “tap on the shoulder” in human terms.

I don’t see anything wrong with using “Interrupters” unless they are used too frequently and begin to affect the dog’s behaviour and relationship with the owner.

Thanks for sharing a bit about you and your young dog. It sounds like you are doing Obedience Training in a way that is both effective and fun for you and you dog! I wish you continued success.

While I understand your reluctance to train with food, the fact remains that dogs eat every single day. Why not use that natural requirement to teach them? I would encourage you to look into modern animal training techniques that have trained everything from killer whales to rhinos to bears to hyenas using food to teach the desired behaviours. I think you will find that the food quickly becomes unnecessary but can be used only occasionally to maintain good performance.

As I suggest to most people who resist reinforcement training, learn how to do it and try it for yourself before deciding that it’s not for you.

Whatever your decision, I wish you a long and happy relationship with your dogs!

This is one of the best articles I have read on compulsion training, and it expresses what I find so distasteful about training with aversives. From my horses to my dogs, I have just never been interested in compliant animals controlled with the push of a button or the yank of a line. I also think that crossover trainers such as yourself are some of the most powerful voices for positive methods. Sometimes I think the only reason people hang on to older methods is not wanting to admit they made a mistake or found a better way.

Always enjoy how you break an issue down. Aside from helping a dog learn a behavior (which I agree should be positive), and not trying to fit a dog into a role that it’s not suited for, is it your position that over the course of a dog’s life that one never ever needs to correct a dog be it verbal or physical for any reason whatsoever? Relatedly, is it your position that a “correction” is always an aversive?

Thanks for your comments! You raise a few great points so I’ll try to tackle them individually.

First off, let me address the term “correction.” While this term has been around the dog world for decades, I have seen it used to mean different things to different people. I find it imprecise and not terribly useful. By dictionary definition, a “correction” is “a change that makes something right, true, accurate, etc.” according to the Merriam Webster definition. All too often I see “corrections” used to simply stop an unwanted behaviour while leaving the dog to offer or figure out how to “make it right” on their own with no guidance from the trainer. It is simply a reprimand. While you may personally have a different definition or process, this is what I most commonly see. For these reasons, I prefer not to discuss the terms “correction” or “correct” when referring to training dogs. What I see people doing is reprimanding/interrupting their dog in order to stop an unwanted behaviour. A good trainer will then help the dog to learn that an alternate acceptable behaviour can get them what they want instead. Unfortunately, this happens infrequently in my experience.

So, to address your point regarding addressing unwanted behaviour “over the course of the dog’s life”, it seems to me inevitable that our dogs will exhibit behaviours we would prefer they didn’t. They are dogs in a human world. We have a choice when we deal with these unwanted behaviours – we can attempt to suppress/discourage those behaviours, we can teach the dog more acceptable alternative behaviours, or we can manage the dog’s environment so that the opportunity to perform the unwanted behaviour never comes up. I believe that most dog owners will use a combination of all three approaches in various measure to deal with unwanted behaviours over the course of a dog’s life. It is just a necessary part of owning a dog.

Regarding whether behaviour modification of unwanted behaviours must always be aversive, that is a tricky question. You mention “correction” and, as I most often see it applied, “correction” first intends to stop or discourage unwanted behaviour. This usually means doing something the dog would prefer to avoid, both now and in the future – that is the textbook definition of “aversive”; anything the animal will work to avoid. Please note that I have not said that “aversives” are necessarily painful, traumatic, emotionally upsetting, etc. They are simply things the animal prefers to avoid and will change their behaviour in order to do so.

So the need to use an aversive stimulus would depend on whether your “correction” is to stop unwanted behaviour, teach alternative behaviour, or manage to remove the opportunity for behaviour. If you are trying to decrease an unwanted behaviour, you would need to use an aversive. That’s just the science of it. You must invoke something that the dog will seek to avoid in order to decrease the behaviour. That could either be adding something aversive in the case of Positive Punishment (+P) or removing something the dog values in the case of Negative Punishment (-P).

We will have to deal with unwanted behaviours with our dogs throughout their lives. How we choose to do that is important. Having a clear understanding of our options and their potent consequences on the dog can greatly improve our effectiveness and maintains a good working relationship with the dog.

Hope that answers your points. And thanks again for reading and your comments.

I 100% agree that the term correction should mean to set right, but what I’m driving at is for an inclusion of Drive into the discussion. While in theory due diligence sounds very good, there comes a time when preparation does not prepare for the unpredictability of reality. Now if a physical correction, specifically a jerk on the lead, were to be associated with the pleasure of doing it correctly, then the correction would have the Pavlovian value of the pleasurable activity. It would be “set” or anchored by the jerk, to be right. If Pavlov’s bell can induce salivation, then a jerk on the lead can induce a pleasurable desire to lay down, or heel, as well. This could then be employed in a critical situation so that a dog is reminded that he wants to lay down, or heel, etc. The jerk is no more aversive than the ringing of Pavlov’s bell. For example, one trains a young police dog in a 100% positive way, every step of development is through the pleasure of prey making. But it has to be anticipated that in a fight with a criminal the dog is going to be kicked and punched. Therefore in training one teaches the dog that these so called negatives are in fact pleasurable, which can be easily be done when a dog is in drive. We use flexible soft batons, big fat bite cushions that the dog can be battered by, and ultimately this can become so strong that the dog is aroused when garbage cans are thrown at him by a criminal and he is being struck for real and is not being particularly stressed by such stimuli. Furthermore his responsiveness to his handler is equally accentuated by the intensity of the experience when in Drive. At any rate, my point is that we think of corrections as aversive, and unfortunately as you point out, 99.99% of the time they are so employed and worse, when the dog is already doing something “wrong,” but when a dog is in Drive corrections can be markers of pleasure states as well as being associated with an obedience behavior. Appreciate the discussion.

Psychology experiments proved decades ago that Respondent (Pavlovian) Conditioning can successfully pair normally unpleasant stimuli with reinforcing contingencies. Rats were trained to accept the pain of a shock as an indicator of a reward for a correct behaviour. In fact, the experiments went further to prove that the shock itself could be conditioned as the reinforcer that maintains a trained behaviour.

While there is evidence to support that what you suggest is possible using behavioural science, I personally question the value of such a process when less complex protocols exist to attain the same or better results. It is certainly not something I would do with a dog.

That said, each trainer should choose the methods that fit their particular skills. The best training protocols are not much use if the trainer cannot execute them well.

If I’m understanding your premise correctly, it’s therefore never appropriate no matter how severe the circumstances, to correct a dog with a jerk on a lead, and relatedly, were a dog to be tied for some reason and were the dog to excitedly jerk against the lead/collar upon seeing its owner returning, that these jerks are damaging his mind?

Quite clearly, you do NOT understand my premise correctly. I don’t recall using the word “appropriate” with regard to leash yanks either in the original article or in my replies. “Appropriate” would imply a value judgement. That’s not really what I’m about. I’m looking for the most effective and efficient training methods. Behavioural science has shown me a wealth of information that has allowed me to be a better trainer with my dogs. I don’t know if that’s “appropriate” or not. It just works.

If you wish to pursue this conversation, Kevin, I suggest we take it private or to another forum (as we have done before). I am wholly uninterested in what some people call “the morality of dog training.” Either something works or it doesn’t. Either I am communicating with my dog effectively or I am not. I’m just trying to improve.

Nicely written. Regarding the pictures on the front of the shock collar boxes, perhaps the manufacturers subliminally know that they are doing something wrong and put the horribly sad looking dogs on their boxes to put people off buying their product.

Hello,
I was wondering if I could translate this text into polish language and publish it on my site with free dog training articles (of course with mentioning that you’re the author and I would add the link to this post). I’m working on a section with transtaled atricles and this one would be really great 🙂

Well written Eric. As a newbie in the dog world the Force-Free concept is new to me but, I did have a short bout with the dominance theory and it didn’t go well (no surprise). Thanks for writing. David Shaw